


Believe

by StarbucksSue



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 04:48:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3161798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarbucksSue/pseuds/StarbucksSue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“McKay, how can you not be seeing the things you’re seeing in front of you?” John asked patiently as he watched the animals in front of them warily.</p><p>“Maybe because two of them just disappeared in a puff of yellow twinkly stars?” Ronon suggested hesitantly, as if he himself didn’t quite believe what he’d just seen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Believe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tarlan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/gifts).



> A late entry in response to Day Two of the Fandom Snowflake Challenge, for Tarlan.
> 
> Not beta'd, and it's getting late, so all mistakes are my own.

As a very small child John Sheppard had believed in magic. His mother had told such wonderful tales about magical castles, wizards, witches and mythical creatures and young John’s imagination had run wild. That was until his mother’s death. After all, if magic existed it would have cured his mother from cancer and made sure she wasn’t taken away from them. But John’s father didn’t believe in magic and told his young son so. Repeatedly. Eventually he’d sent both sons off to boarding school and magic became something almost forgotten.

When John met Rodney McKay things changed, in more ways than one as John had never thought he could fall in love with another man. Rodney didn’t believe in magic. In fact Rodney didn’t believe in anything, with the exception of himself, science and John. But Rodney believed he could do anything. John thought Rodney could do magic. In his eyes pulling the proverbial rabbit out of the hat was nothing compared to what Rodney could accomplish. Rodney just laughed at him.

Until they went to P9X-339.

“Okay, so I am not seeing the things I’m seeing in front of me.” Rodney proclaimed illogically as the wormhole closed behind them, leaving an ominous silence.

“McKay, how can you not be seeing the things you’re seeing in front of you?” John asked patiently as he watched the animals in front of them warily.

“Maybe because two of them just disappeared in a puff of yellow twinkly stars?” Ronon suggested hesitantly, as if he himself didn’t quite believe what he’d just seen.

John couldn’t believe he’d just heard Ronon use the expression ‘twinkly stars’.

“Ronon appears to be correct,” Teyla agreed in her usual calm and unflappable voice. “I believe I have heard tales of these creatures before but I did not think they could be true. I have never known creatures to be able to disappear in such a way.

“In a puff of twinkly stars.” John clarified slowly, as two more of the creatures disappeared in a puff of twinkly stars.

Pink twinkly stars.

John looked on as Rodney closed his eyes tightly and then opened them again.

“Right, so they’re still there,” Rodney confirmed, “and you can all see them too. Okay, so are we asleep? Or...I know,” he clicked his fingers impatiently, “we’ve been overcome by some sleeping drug and we’re dreaming this.”

“Doesn’t feel like a dream.” Ronon grunted.

“No, no. It doesn’t. It’s happened to us before. One planet we went to made us dream we were back on Earth.” Rodney explained.

“This doesn’t seem the same though,” John disagreed, “and those unicorns look real enough. What do your scanners say?” He turned to Rodney expectantly.

Two more of the unicorns disappeared in a puff of twinkly stars. Blue this time, John noted.

Rodney sat down on the edge of the platform, pulling out his tablet as well as the handheld scanner. He frowned.

“Huh,” he said after poking at both instruments a few times, “that’s interesting.” He lapsed into silence and John rolled his eyes.

“What’s interesting, McKay?” John asked with growing impatience, sitting beside him.

Teyla walked forwards slowly towards the remaining animals, with Ronon not far behind, gun in hand.

“Well, these creatures, unicorns if you must, are showing on the scanners but not as normal life forms,” Rodney stopped and pulled a face, “there’s also this strange colour on the spectrum, right here.” He indicated with his finger.

“The eighth colour,” John said in amusement, “isn’t that the colour of magic, only wizards and cats are supposed to be able to see it.”

Rodney glared at him. “You’ve been reading Terry Pratchett again haven’t you?

“I’m on the second book now, ‘The Light Fantastic’.” He explained.

Rodney raised his eyebrows. “Well, at least you’re getting on better with it than ‘War and Peace.” He turned back to the tablet.

“True,” John agreed, “it is somewhat lighter reading though. But seriously, what is happening here?”

“I really don’t know,” Rodney sighed, “I mean, these animals do look something like unicorns and this is Pegasus after all so that in itself really shouldn’t surprise us. It’s the way they’re disappearing, oh and reappearing,” he remarked in surprise as two more unicorns appeared before them.

“Ah...just there, as those two appeared there was a flash of a kind of greeny-yellow-purple colour on the scanner, as well as a surge of some kind of electrical impulse.”

“I’m pretty sure that is the colour of magic,” John chuckled. “Look, Teyla’s getting close and they don’t seem to be concerned by her presence at all. They obviously don’t see us as being a threat of any kind. Is there any kind of other signatures here, maybe an Ancient facility or something.”

“Yes,” Rodney replied, “actually there is, over in that direction.”

“Maybe that’s where we should head. See if we can find out more.”

John got to his feet and started walking towards where Teyla was now standing close to one of the animals, talking to it gently. The unicorn had stopped eating and was standing still, watching her. Almost as if it’s listening, John thought.

Teyla turned as John walked up to her.

“I do not believe these creatures have seen humans before,” Teyla remarked, "they do not appear to be afraid of us at all."

“Rodney’s got something on his readings,” John replied softly, “there is something unusual about these animals and he thinks there is some kind of Ancient facility here. We need to find that before we can make any further progress.”

“I agree,” Teyla replied with a soft nod. “I do not think these creatures will try to stop us.”

She patted the unicorn gently on its neck and it harrumphed softly, almost nodding its head as it went back to eating the long grass of the pasture.

“Come, let us find this Ancient facility, I would like to know more about these creatures you call unicorns.”

They waited for Rodney to catch up with them and started walking in the direction he indicated. The land around the Stargate was lightly forested and the weather was cool but sunny, ideal for walking.

The unicorns watched as they walked away and then went back to grazing, not at all perturbed by strangers on their planet.

“Over here,” Rodney called out sometime later, “look, through those trees there.” He pointed through the trees to a building partly hidden by the leaves. 

John stepped forward and led the way to the building.

“It looks Ancient,” he remarked as he stopped in the entrance, “the writing’s Ancient anyway.” He placed his hand against the sensor and the door groaned as it opened most of the way.”

He switched on the light on his P90 but it proved unnecessary as the lights flickered into life as he stepped into the passage, with Rodney close behind.

“Ronon, Teyla, you stay outside and keep watch.” John ordered. We’ll go in and investigate.”

*** 

“Found something,” Rodney called out finally. 

John groaned as he got to his feet. Rodney had spent half an hour searching the small lab before losing himself in the database, which had kept him quiet for over two hours.

“What’ve you got?” John asked, coming up beside him.

“There’s a reference to the unicorns, only they call them re’em, just saying that they are a native of the planet. They were already here when the Ancients first came here and they wanted to do some research to see if they could harness the, well they call it an electrical charge at first, but they go on to say that although they could sense and record the electrical charge they couldn’t work out any way to capture and use it. They finally decided that...oh I don’t believe this...they decided that the re’em were magic.” Rodney broke off in disgust as John roared with laughter.

“Oh I hate you sometimes,” Rodney exclaimed, “this really can’t be it, there’s no such things as magic.”

“Maybe not on Earth,” John said softly, wrapping his arm around Rodney and pulling him closer and kissing him softly. “But this is the Pegasus Galaxy, anything’s possible.”

“Oh yeah,” Rodney replied pulling away slightly, still a little put out. “But magic, I mean that something completely different, I just don’t know how to prove it.”

“It’s magic Rodney, you can’t prove it any more than the Ancients could.” John shrugged. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

They left the building, meeting up with Ronon and Teyla outside. As they made their way back onto the footpath the air fizzled in front of them and, amid a swirl of blue stars, two of the unicorns appeared. The larger of the two stepped forward and lowered his head, touching his horn to John’s head, it then did the same to Rodney. This close they could feel the energy from the animal and John lifted his hand up to the animal’s neck, petting it softly as its partner moved forward to stand beside it. 

After a few moments both animals backed up and, in another swirl of stars, vanished again.

“They are such beautiful creatures,” Teyla commented, “did you find out anything further about them?”

“Just that the Ancients thought they were magic.” John replied. “There’s nothing further here.”

Teyla looked from John to Rodney.

“Yes, yes. Well, the Ancients didn’t know everything, but John’s right, we didn’t find anything useful. The animals were here before the Ancients, so that wasn’t any help.”

They made their way back to the Stargate, as they left the forest pairs of unicorns paced them all the way back before doing a disappearing act once they got there, vanishing together in a cloud of pink, blue, yellow and green stars.

“Magic indeed!” Rodney huffed as he dialled the DHD.

John’s laughter followed him as he stepped through the event horizon.


End file.
